I see questions from a lot of users, not using Ubuntu. They are using Mate, but not Ubuntu Mate. I guess my question is why you use this forum rather than the Mint, Debian, Devuan, etc. etc. etc. forums?

Does this forum give better advice? Is it friendlier? Did you once run Ubuntu Mate and then switch, but just not want to join another forum? I am curious, please let me know your thoughts.

For Ubuntu- / Debian-specific issues, this forum may help, but it is advised you go with your distributor's resources for help first. (i.e. if you use Pop!_OS, submit queries to System76's support or Pop!_Planet.)

For issues specific to Ubuntu MATE software, you should find a great answer here in relatively little time.

For issues with UKUI... Well, let's just say it's based on MATE and that's about it. About as distinct a difference as Ubuntu and Debian, and we probably won't help with that as Ubuntu Kylin and Kylin Linux distributions in general have their own, regional support communities.

I kind of thought that and agree. I ran straight Debian Mate for a while and joined the forum. After just reading a few of the responses, I never posted there. Many answer were plain nasty. I don't see how that helps the Linux community at all. I have heard the same about PC Linux's forum. Other than this one the most helpful forum I have participated in was Zorin, which is based on Ubuntu but uses it's own custom desktop. I gave up Zorin when the developers became to Windows like, which is their objective, but I just found it to hidden and locked down. Thank you for your answers.

Hi jymm, I consider Linux MATE and Ubuntu MATE as being siblings, very close yet beautifully different. Just as jaybo said above, "this group is far friendlier than the other Ubuntu groups" and I totally agree.

Many answer were plain nasty. I don't see how that helps the Linux community at all.

I think it comes down to an elitist attitude, and too many people asking too many of the same questions. I was exposed to the other end of the community help spectrum with BetterDiscord — Man, are the people in the main support guild on Discord simply straight toxic. Seem to get better help from theme-specific guilds like ClearVision and Nox.

My opinion about the state of open source communities

But there is another side of the coin that I want to posit — There are people who do not want Linux desktop distributions to become popular. Moot point because their worst fears had been confirmed with Microsoft and Canonical holding hands, and with Microsoft joining The Linux Foundation.

Myself, I am of two minds about it; I see the free and independent spirit of open source poached upon and caged with the presence of what was, at one time open source's larger opposition. But the very nature of open-source also mandates we allow everything, from everybody so long it benefits the projects which said contributions intend to support.

On the other hand the homogenization of the Linux desktop through large projects like Canonical's Ubuntu was a major push forward toward popularizing the idea of an easy-to-use, ready-from-box Linux desktop supporting a common standard with proprietary software — much to the chagrin of Debian developers who wouldn't even touch what Canonical had their fingers in.

While this rift between Free Debian and "Slave Debian" caused much consternation between Debian and Canonical at all fronts, ultimately the people chose to be for-proprietary, for-closed source software so long it benefits use of the hardware they've presumably spent thousands of dollars on and helps people do their job where their workforce uses popular closed-source solutions.

Because of the people — collectively, every noob who began treating Linux as a curiosity — defining the direction of open-source system development, there are going to be individuals in other projects which have been lost to the fold who are going to be salty about the popularity of major distributions, and will express such salt toward people who don't even know which manual to begin reading.

I agree about the elitist attitude. I also agree some people caused their own problems with their questions, something like " I can's get this stupid OS to... ". As the answering the same questions a pleasant "please search the forum" or just ignore the question would seem better than being nasty with a "RTFM". MS also worries me, as they have pretty much killed or taken over thing the professed love for or wanted to help.

I was on Ubuntu around 2016 and didn't really like the install or the front end. I moved to Debian where I found mate. I moved back to Ubuntu via the raspberry platform and I now run on my laptop. I've read thru the Debian forums and I got the impression that if you were not an expert you weren't likely to get the time of day. I found it easier to look for answers elsewhere. I actually came to the conclusion that many of the dean experts were just cut and paste experts. Often code was never checked to see if their answers actually worked. One example, the answer they gave was in someone else blog. The original blogger came back a few days later apologizing for his error. The cut and paste expert obviously never read the blog again. This incorrect code was copied and pasted by several other cut and paste experts.

The experts instead of giving simple to read and understand answers seemed to try to one-up each other by providing more complex answers indicating how clever they were. I stopped reading their forums.

I'm enjoying all of the Ubuntu forums and I'm especially liking the new mate. For some reason, I don't trust snap, but that's probably one of my quirks. Everything else is really awesome. It would take a major mindset change at Debian to lure me back.

I use Mate BECAUSE it is based on Gnome 2, which I love. I switched to Linux because of Win8. I tried gnome3, nope, I tried Unity, nope. For all the trying to make a modern desktop, the traditional still is the most useful, makes the most sense, and is the most productive for me.

[markjschafer] I am also not a fan of Snap packages. I don't like how they clog up the hard drive myself. As long as I can install Synaptic and use .deb packages I will stay with Ubuntu Mate. I get the dependency issues, but they have never been a problem for me. Then again early on I learned not to force software. One mistake was enough for me!

I think it is a combination of the two, there are certainly some good Linux users (some experts too) on this forum, I consider myself an advanced user but in no way, an expert. I try to approach things in a simple way and when I reply, I have certainly not always helped to solve a problem, but do attempt to help someone nonetheless. Sometimes I may even not fully understand a question which can lead to me posting a wrong or misinformed answer, this is not intentional just to make that clear.

99.99% of the users on this forum are very friendly, I live by the saying:

"Kindness is something the blind can see and the deaf can hear".

There are unfortunately some members on every forum that do their best to attack someone which is really a sad state of affairs. I hope that they read my little statement and have a good think about how they themselves would like to be treated!.

Over the past week or so, I've really gotten into snap and I'm seeing it's usefulness. One of my key tools in looking at different aspects of ubuntu is clonezilla. Prior to embarking into a new subject, I backup my root and home partitions to another partition, so if i really make a stuff up of what I'm doing, it's easier to restore to your start point than reinstall and reconfigure.

I started here because I installed Ubuntu MATE to an external hard drive, and I still intend to keep that going for use in the future - like when I transport it to another laptop I use at another location. Whenever I am able to do that, of course.

I then switched to Linux Mint MATE from Cinnamon on my main installation, and I've asked MATE-related questions here from time to time.